no longer grounded

After an extended stay in London at the height of the acid house phenomenon, Ellen Allien returned home to Berlin and started DJing. By the mid-90s she had spun at a number of important clubs and was making a name for herself. Working at a record shoppe called Delirium and having a radio program only fed her appetite and knowledge of the modern European dance sound. After throwing a number of parties called Bpitch Control, she started a label of the same name and starting producing records as well. Her second LP, Berlinette, was her big crossover hit, at least in my mind.

...it's the conceptual overlap and idea overflow of the bittersweet "Wish" that resonate strongest -- over a mournful synth line, a quadruple-timed beatbox, and heavily processed acoustic guitar chugs, Allien daydreams herself out of postwar Berlin: "Need a planet without cars and wars...I wish it could be true." Bitingly fierce, technologically adroit, and curiously poppy, Berlinette marks yet another high point in an already superb year for Germanic techno. - AMG

Her third proper album, Thrills, comes out June 7th and oozes sexiness all over the dance floor. Darker and dirtier than Kraftwerk. More timeless than american electro. Crisper and cleaner than the aborted electroclash 'movement'. More interesting and emotional than microhouse (whatever the hell that is). Fragments of the past two decades of dance music are all over the place and I couldn't be happier. The first single is Magma and while I would love to talk about the runaway electro-futurist monorail of this track, Bpitch has done a great job with that already.

Everybody will sweat in this small workout because Magma is like a little steam turbine with which Ellen Allien softly digs up the dance floor so that we can dance at the center of the earth, sweating prufusely in the heat. Whoever doesn't understand that Ellen turns more than just a few knobs is, so to speak, not seeing the forest with all the trees in the way. Ellen Allien, our magical fairy, steers the techno of "Magma" with a baddass rowdy voice, like swinging around a wild red flag in order to push the limits of the tube even further.

Ellen Allien - Magma